Amidst the waves of sweeping away voices critical of the 2020 health scare deception was Brian Rose, podcaster turned video interviewer. His April 6th interview with David Icke prompted Goolag to ban him from Youtube, shocking Rose into the realization that if you don’t host your own files, they’re not your files. So he set out to do the most reasonable thing any unpersoned individual should do: to establish his own platform. The “Freedom Platform”.
But, like with many NeoBoomers, he and his team have made some perplexing decisions in the construction of a platform bearing the word “Freedom” in its title. Rose was quick to run a crowdfunding campaign, capitalizing on the public’s general disorientation through the rapid life disruption brought about by the scamdemic. It turns out that donating twenty dollars to an entrepenuer during the early stages of an information war really doesn’t help to resolve an information blockade. Let’s take a look at what donors can proudly say they’ve helped build.
Despite being billed, in his shameless crowdfunding pitches, as a place for everyone to have a voice, the platform really only hosts his own work. The site does not offer up raw video in a standardized way, but requires a javascript web player. Only samples can be played, with the site demanding viewers sign up or become subscribers to watch a full video.
Visitors are assaulted with connections to cloudflare, FBIbook (How nice of Brian to partner with the same cadre he found himself banned by), googleslavemanager along with onesignal and several other CDNs. Not really hosting your own content then, are you?
Viewers are offered an option to download clips although the linking is mediated through a third party, WeTransfer, a file sharing host who ostensibly derives revenue from harvesting data. Again, not hosting your own work on your own infrastructure, Brian? I thought you wanted to insulate yourself against the possibility of being censored. WeTransfer pages do not function at all without js.
Video comments are provided by Disqus, a Goolag partner and known censorious bad actor. Also, good job centralizing your discussion section into yet another third party. A very typical maneuver found among the technologically impaired rightist boomers. And since freedomplatform.tv tries to force users to login to even view the meatier parts, there is not bound to be much discourse anyway.
Thier centralized big tech mess also bears both a TOS and privacy policy in which we find:
By logging-in to our site you are also giving your explicit permission for us to correspond with your via email.
email harvesting
You are free to Unsubscribe from any and all emails at any time.
If I had to hazard a guess, the unsubscribe link is probably also to a third party data harvester.
We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights
Slaves to the DMCA.
We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.
Of course they have a Communist Guidelines, if only by another name.
The freedomplatform.tv boilerplate reads “We take your privacy seriously. We will never sell your information.” But upon further inspection:
The data we collect about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together follows: Usage Data includes information about how you use our website Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. Marketing Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing. We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. We may receive Technical and Usage Data about you from third party analytics providers like Google and GoSquared, third party advertising networks and search information providers.
They go on to blatantly admit that visitor data is shared out to advertisers which comes as no surprise to anyone who takes the time to look at the third party site requests. And anyone still using cookies (for some reason) will find freedomplatform.tv plants tracking cookies.
Ditch the third parties and CDNs. All of them.
If you’re going to require javascript programs, at least post up their source on some git repo.
Serve video directly as a file. They’re just interviews, they don’t need to be 4K lossless spectacles.
Drop cloudflare.
Don’t outsource your comments section. Did getting banned in multiple places not teach you anything?
Or
Just deploy a peertube instance and allow federation to expand your discovery as well as increase your resiliency against censorship. It would also simultaneously resolve points 1, 2, 3 and 5 in a single pass. But I guess nobody has ever raised a million dollars in crowdfunding over a peertube instance. As it is right now, there is nothing free about freedomplatform.tv, not even for Brian himself as he has shackled his own service to many of the very parties involved in his banning to begin with.